Morning Walk

We are dog-sitting Hank and it's time for his morning walk. Nora grabs his leash and clips it onto his collar. Sylvie objects, says she gets to hold the leash. Nora offers a reasonable solution: we take turns and swap the leash at each corner. Sylvie rejects this. Nora abandons reason and scratches her sister's arm.

We have a Zero Tolerance for Violence policy, so Nora spends two minutes sitting on her bed screaming. Sylvie is asked to wait on the couch where talks will resume when Nora is done. She sits and screams. Hank senses that his morning walk has taken a bad turn so I let him off his leash and into the front yard.

Nora serves her time and we meet back on the couch. Sylvie proposes a solution: we trade the leash at each crack in the sidewalk. I tell her I think that's too often and  would set us up for further conflict.  I propose every 2 blocks since there are 4 blocks total. Both reject this. I tell the girls I am going to clean up for awhile and to let me know if they figure out a way to make it work.

A few minutes later, Sylvie finds me washing dishes and tells me their proposal: Sylvie will ride her scooter, Nora will ride her car, and I will walk Hank. I tell her I think that will work and it does. Hank gets his morning walk.

First Haircut

Elinor had her first haircut this week. I had been asking her for awhile if she wanted her haircut and she always told me no. Then she finally asked me, "you will drop me off or you will stay?" and that's when we figured out that she was envisioning being dropped off at the groomers like Hank. Once we got that mix-up sorted out she was ready to go.

The before shot:

You are probably wondering how I stop myself from eating up that cute face every day and let me tell you, it is not easy.

The during shot:

Taking things very seriously.

And the after:

 Fancy lady!

Boogie Boarder

Yesterday our friends invited us to a beach potluck to celebrate the new baby their family will welcome in October. Sylvie loves to hang out with her Daddy so she decided she would give boogie boarding a try because Daddy is always out in the water at the beach.

Sylvie doesn't like getting water in her face, but she had to deal with it to boogie board. She loved riding it all the way into the sand, but did not like the one time she flipped off into the water. But she got back on and went for it again. One of my favorite things about parenting is watching my kids meet a challenge head on and then seeing their feeling of accomplishment when they succeed. This was definitely one of those times.

 Elinor took it all in from the comfort of shore.

Sunflower Seeds

It's pretty amazing how quickly a sunflower goes from being the most beautiful thing in the garden to the biggest eyesore. When a sunflower is done, it's really ugly. Oona and Elinor were done, so we cut off their heads and took out their seeds to make roasted sunflower seeds. We left their stalks in the ground for now, to possibly be used as stakes for future plants.

 

Unrelated, but also fun: falling backwards in a chair.

We're Back

And we're back...it's been awhile. We spent 2 weeks in Norway and it's been a week since we've been back. Where to start?

Here's a good place. Oldemor (great-grandmother), Bestemor (grandmother), Daddy and the girls. What a blessing to have us all together in Trondheim, Norway, a place that is so special to us.

In case you're wondering if I made it into any pictures, I did.

They just didn't maybe go as successfully.

Pirates

Pirates has been a favorite game around here for awhile now. Hang on to your treasure!

Sunflower Update

A few of our sunflowers are too tall for us to measure (see previous measurements here) and a couple are almost as tall as the house!

The most recent to open is Oona.

Sylvie is Five: Part IV (Meet Mellman)

Sylvie took about a week to name her snake. In the meantime, we called him Snakey because the first time Sylvie saw him she said "Hi there, Snakey." Names considered were Nancy, Gloria, Monte and Snakey but ultimately she settled on Mellman because the snake has markings that look like a giraffe (and Mellman is the giraffe in Madagascar).

Here's a letter Sylvie wrote to me about her snake a few days after she got it. I asked her if she likes her new snake and she writes back "I love it but I am scared of the head."

It's pretty amazing how comfortable Sylvie has gotten with Mellman in the last couple of weeks. As for me, I am still trying to work up the courage to hold it.

 

Sylvie is 5: Part III (The Big Day)

What's a birthday without the actual birthday? Sylvie's birthday was on a Wednesday, so it was not a school day for her. My friend had shared a Living Social deal to a local nail salon offering a child's mani/pedi with pink lemonade for $10. So I grabbed two and invited Cousin Amanda for lunch and a mani/pedi.

Sylvie has had it in the works for awhile that on her birthday she would wear her soccer uniform because she was number 5.

Thursday is a school day for Sylvie so the morning of her birthday was spent shopping for supplies and then decorating alien cupcakes to take to school Thursday. We tried to buy the supplies at Target, but these cupcakes required such junky candy (i.e., sour punch straws) that we had to make a trip to 7-11. But Sylvie loved making them. She handled ears and antennae and Daddy did the detail work. Elinor hovered around the table and figured out that if she didn't mess with the cupcakes she could pretty easily eat candy at 10am unnoticed.

Then we picked up Grandma and went to Sylvie's lunch choice, In-N-Out Burger.

And from there to the nail salon, which turned out to be a really adorable place.

We came home to the scavenger hunt that brought her to her new pet snake. Or as Sylvie says, "my dream came true."

We finished the night off withdinner at Sylvie's favorite pizza place. The waitresses sang to her which Sylvie told me was "the worst part" of the day (does anyone like to have waitresses sing to them?) but that everything else was perfect.

Father's Day 2012

In 10 years, I can't remember Thomas ever asking for a specific present until now. For Father's Day, he told me he wanted a freezer stocked with meat he could grill all summer.

So that's what he got:

I tried to make some brownies to go with the theme, but they were rock hard and stuck to the paper - yum!

Fortunately, we had time to stop by Costco and pick up a key lime pie.

Sylvie made some matching shirts for her and Daddy at school:

And for Papa we made a crossword puzzle:

We spent the day at Grandma and Papa's house with a big lunch and lots of bocce and playing in the water in the backyard.

Bocce requires very precise measuring.

(Check out Sylvie's first Father's Day and Elinor's first Father's Day here)